France needs a revolution

12:01AM GMT 27 Nov 2002

France is locked in a familiar struggle between a Right-wing government and the trade unions. In 1997, the upshot was the defeat of the first, followed by five years of awkward cohabitation between a Gaullist president, Jacques Chirac, and a Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin. Elections this summer have left the Right controlling the levers of power at all levels. Yet, for Mr Chirac, it is a case of once bitten, twice shy.

Despite its impressive mandate, the government is handling the unions with care. The difference between the previous and the present conservative administration is best illustrated in the president's choice of prime ministers. Alain Juppé, who came into office in 1995, is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. In the style of that elite, he drew up a master plan for the reform of an economy still dominated by the state. The unions resisted and M Juppé fell.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, appointed in May, is a modest provincial from Poitiers, portrayed by Plantu, the cartoonist of Le Monde, as returning from the shops with his stick of bread. He has sought a less confrontational approach: pushing ahead piecemeal with reform while maintaining dialogue with the unions, a mixture of what he calls fermeté and humanité.

The results so far have been mildly encouraging. The lorry drivers' protest, a familiar cause of transport chaos in the 1990s, has fizzled out, and the privatisation programme is continuing with the sale of the state's holding in Crédit Lyonnais. The government has been helped by the depressed condition of the economy - growth of only one per cent is expected this year - and a warning to potential strikers that they will not be allowed to break the law; in that warning the firm hand of Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, is evident.

However, the unions have described this week's action, which extended yesterday to air traffic controllers, post office and telecommunication workers, railwaymen and Air France employees, as an "alerte sociale". This implies a more sustained campaign of demonstrations in the months to come against government plans to cut the public deficit and reform the pensions system. Mr Raffarin's emollience may get him further than Mr Juppé, but the forces determined to maintain generous state provision are formidable. Despite his extraordinary electoral ascendancy, it is still to be doubted whether Mr Chirac has the stomach for a war à outrance with the unions. France still awaits its Thatcherite revolution.